God, Guts, Heartbreak & Headaches: The Start of Lexus

Vern Alden was going to be in Portland, Oregon the week after I contacted him. Mike Shuler, an Ohio University graduate, was the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers and Alden was going to attend their game against the Los Angeles Clippers. Yuki Togo asked Yale Gieszl,...

Security was very tight. Anticipation and excitement were high as Lexus dealers gathered at Toyota’s Calty Design Studios in Southern California. It was early December 1988 and the dealers would be given the opportunity to see the F1 and F2 prototypes for the first...

It was December 30, 1988. I was at home when Jim Perkins called. We had lost! The judge had ruled against us, and Yuki wanted to meet in the board room the next morning, New Year’s Eve. I hung up the phone in disbelief. How could we have lost? Now what do we do? I was...

  I didn’t sleep much that night, and the next morning I had a nervous knot in my stomach that wouldn’t go away. How could we introduce the F1 in 10 days without a name? We couldn’t change the name in 10 days. And if we were to change the name, why hadn’t we done...

  While Lexus was in the beginning stages of our start-up, the rest of the world was experiencing new beginnings of a different nature.   The Soviet Union was pulling out of Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden was forming Al Qaeda. The first major virus...

The Detroit Auto Show was opened to the press on January 11, 1989. Detroit wanted to compete with the world-class auto shows in Frankfurt, Paris, and Tokyo. In an attempt to draw European and Japanese manufacturers and global press to the show, it was renamed the...

  Jim Perkins was to be the keynote speaker at the Dallas Auto Show on January 20, but he cancelled saying he had the flu. Instead, later that day we all learned Jim was returning to GM to be the assistant manager of the Chevrolet division and the heir apparent...

    I knew better than to go see Bob McCurry and tell him I wanted the job of leading the Lexus Division. Bob would have thrown me out of his office. I talked myself into showing some inner courage and went unannounced to Yuki Togo’s office. I told Yuki that...

  After Jim Perkins left and before the naming issue had been resolved, I went to Japan for a week along with the Lexus Japan staff coordinator, some of the Lexus marketing staff, and Team One Advertising executives Scott Gilbert and Tom Cordner. We were to meet...

  After the meeting with Chairman Eiji Toyoda, we took the Shinkansen (Japanese high-speed bullet train) to Tokyo to catch a flight back to the U.S. I was sitting next to Scott Gilbert, the Executive Vice President of Team One Advertising, and Tom Cordner, the...

  Fundamental to the DNA of Toyota is a core principle known as kaizen. This principle gave rise to the Lexus marketing brand: “The Pursuit of Perfection.”   Kaizen means the pursuit of improvement, constantly making every effort to improve efficiency and...